00:01Friends at CSIRO have invited me to somewhere very special.
00:05Today I'm not just hanging with nerds, I'm hanging with nerds at the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness.
00:11Now this place is incredible. It is a high-tech, very high-security facility
00:17because they deal every day with the world's most deadly and transmissible diseases
00:23to learn more and more about them.
00:30Before I'm allowed anywhere near the inside of the building, there's a little bit of training to get done.
00:38G'day Deb. Hi Nate.
00:40I am so excited. Alright, what do I need to know?
00:43Okay, we're going to take you through the secure induction, through the props
00:46and then we'll show you the video and then you've got an assessment to do.
00:48I've got to do a test? Oh, you sure have.
00:50Do I have to ace it? You do.
00:52Training complete. First things first. Come with me.
01:04I've got to make sure that I take off absolutely everything
01:08because whatever goes in can't come out again.
01:11So that means that I need to take off all of my clothes.
01:15Excuse me.
01:17Well, that was a bit of a different experience and got some new threads.
01:24I want to show you, first of all, what this place is all about.
01:28So I need some help. Come in here.
01:30Meet Deb. G'day Deb.
01:32Oh, hi Nate. Welcome into the high-bike containment facility.
01:35Thank you. That was a bit of an odd way to come to work in the morning.
01:39Absolutely.
01:40You have to do that every single day?
01:41Yeah, our staff that work here inside the facility,
01:44they're in the box, in the box, in the box.
01:46They have to come in like that every single day.
01:48In through a shower, out through a shower in the afternoon.
01:51So where are we now?
01:53We're actually in a training laboratory now.
01:55So we use this to train all our staff to work here inside the laboratory.
01:59It's a huge structure.
02:00Yeah. I mean, the most exciting thing is it was built 40 years ago,
02:04yet it remains absolutely world-class in terms of the biocontainment infrastructure.
02:08And the things you're working with in here are pretty serious.
02:11So we do both diagnostics and research on both animal diseases
02:16and also then zoonotic diseases.
02:18That includes avian influenza, includes Hendra virus,
02:21which can infect horses and people, Ebola virus as well.
02:25As part of CSIRO, one of the really important things for us
02:28is around early career research.
02:30And so we have lots of both PhD students and post-op students
02:34and other early career researchers who are focused on developing the skills
02:38to understand these diseases.
02:41Let me introduce you to Jen.
02:42Hello, Jen.
02:43I understand you're going to help me, well, maybe have a bit of a play.
02:46But first of all, I want to know, why do you have to wear these suits?
02:50So these suits protect us from the dangerous viruses that we're working with.
02:55So this is part of our PPE that we wear every day
02:58when we're handling viruses that can infect people.
03:01Do you reckon I'd be any good at it?
03:03I don't know. Let's find out.
03:04Do I have a crack?
03:05Yep.
03:06All right, what do we do?
03:07So I reckon you should probably go for that one.
03:09You put your right foot in.
03:10Yep.
03:11That was the suit, not me.
03:14This is not particularly easy.
03:19What's going on here? Why am I blowing up?
03:22Because the suit fills with air,
03:23and that's part of how we stop viruses entering into the suit.
03:27It's under positive pressure.
03:28I've got my own personal air conditioning unit.
03:30That's actually kind of quite nice.
03:31It's nice.
03:32I could do with one of these in the studio.
03:33I get pretty sweaty.
03:34So who is it that has to wear these suits?
03:37Any of our scientists that work at PC4 have to wear these suits,
03:40so that's when we're working with the most dangerous viruses.
03:43These are thicker than dishwashing gloves.
03:45Yep.
03:46They're pretty chunky.
03:47It's more like gardening gloves.
03:48How do you train though?
03:49So we do have some games and things that we train with.
03:53So we have operation,
03:54because it does require some pretty fine motor skills.
03:57Hold on.
03:58Okay.
03:59I can get it.
04:00Nice.
04:01Oh, well, thank you so much for letting me get in this and have a play.
04:06I just now need to figure out how to get out.
04:09Hello.
04:10Well, that's the first time I've ever had to have a shower to get out of work.
04:15Do you want to see it?
04:16It's just in there.
04:17It's a shower inside an airlock.
04:20Believe it or not.
04:21Well, that was an experience.
04:23In fact, this whole day has been a huge, massive new experience.
04:28One I'm so excited to have had.
04:31Security first.
04:32Right.
04:33Time to bug out.
04:35Bug.
04:36Oh, I didn't dry my hair.
04:40Oh, darn.
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